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"economically' and technologically feasible" apparently is made by the agency having oversight responsi- bilities, but this has not prevented the implementation of "reasonable and prudent alternatives" that have had drastic economic effects, such as those being imposed on federal hydroelectric power operations in the Pacific Northwest. There is no evidence that the criterion that reasonable and prudent alterna- tives be "economically" feasible has any meaning in the application of the Endangered Species Act. Endangered Economic Health The Endangered Species Act is the most powerful environmental law enacted by Congress. In reality, any federal agency action affecting a listed species is subordinated to the act. Unprecedented discretion is given the two agencies imple~ menting the act, the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service. There are virtually no economic constraints in implementing the act. One of the great failures in implementation of the Endan- gered Species Act is the emphasis on Sections 7 and 9, which pro- vide for enforcement of the act against citizens otherwise engaged in lawful activities. While conser- vation and recovery is the stated goal of the act, the emphasis is on enforcement. In fact, the cost of recovery has not even been esti- mated for hundreds of listed spe- cies. New species are being listed without any indication of the fea- sibility of recovery, much less the cost of recovery and delisting of those species. The Endangered Species Act was last reauthorized in 1987 for a period of five years. It was due for reauthorization in 1992. Dur- 48 . FORUM for Applied Research and Public Policy .. 031018 ing the last nine years, several bills have been introduced in both the House and the Senate to reautho- rize the act. Some of these bills have attempted to address the problems described above. Others have at- tempted to reinforce the existing methods of implementing the act or to make it even more stringent. Few of these bills passed Senate or House committees, and none was ' enacted incolaw. There is no con- sensus by a congressional major- ity on what changes need to be made to the act. As a result, the existing act remains the law of the land. Chronology of Compromise The Upper Colorado River Basin, which is the watershed upstream of Glen Canyon Dam, includes more than 108,000 square miles (280,000 square kilometers) of drainage and thousands of miles of'rivers and streams. It also in- cludes 800 miles (1,300 kilome- ters) of designated critical habitat for four endangered fish species. Water development and use in the basin supports irrigated agri- culture, urban development, rec- reation, fisheries, wildlife, and a variety of industries. Transfer of water out of the basin also sup- plies municipal water for Salt Lake City, Cheyenne, Denver, Colorado Springs, Albuquerque, and other urban areas in Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado. When the Endangered Species Act was passed in 1973, the Colo- rado squawfish-now the Colorado pikeminnow-and the humpback chub were "grandfathered" as original listed endangered species. Two other Colorado River basin species, the razorback sucker and the bonytail, were later added to the endangered species list. In the late 1970s, the Bureau of Recla- mation began "consulting" with the Fish and Wildlife Service on the impacts of water projects on endangered species, as required by the Endangered Species Act. Since that time, the Fish and Wildlife Service has uniformly held that water project depletions any- where in the Upper Colorado River Basin, including those depletions upstream of pertinent habitat, "jeopardize" the endangered fish. In the early 1980s, the Endan- gered Species Act was applied to nonfederal projects. In the interim, water users and the Upper Basin states began to more fully under- stand the implications of the En- dangered Species Act; a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court brought construction of Tellico Dam-a project of the Tennessee Valley Authority-to a complete halt due to potential impacts on the snail darter, an endangered speCIes. In July 1983, the Fish and Wildlife Service developed a draft report stating that the only way for water projects in the Upper Colorado River Basin to avoid jeop- ardizing endangered fish species was to replace all depletions on a one-for-one basis. New projects would have to double storage ca- pacity and release one-half of the depletion to the stream to offset the other one-half being used. This requirement would have made fu- ture water development infeasible. It would have deptived the Upper Basin states of water entitlements provided for under interstate com- pacts that had been ratified by Congress. . Colorado Water Congress Spe- cial Project. The draft report got the attention of the Upper Basin states and Upper Basin water us-